A Little of This and That

Hey, y’all. It’s day 44 of our journey on Whole30 and we’ll be reintroducing corn. Since corn is a starchy, sweet -?- what would you call it? It’s given its own food group. Doesn’t it qualify as a vegetable? We’ve always known it as a vegetable. But, when it is dry, such as for feed, is it a grain? But, also when it is dry, it is used as a seed to grow a – vegetable – unless it’s being grown for feed?

Huh?

So.

I asked the internet.

Corn is a grain.

And a vegetable.

And a fruit.

Fruit?

Oh, please.

The Mayo clinic classifies corn as a fruit. Don’t ask me why. My mind was blown at that point. Something about the kernels being part of the plant that contain the seeds. Aren’t the kernels the seeds?

Yikes!

Botanically, corn is classified as a grain. Corn seed is a grain because it is a dry seed of a species of grass.

Grass?

Really?

Unless, the corn seed is harvested for eating, then it is a vegetable.

Ask a simple question . . .

It will be all the more interesting to see if this versatile plant produces adverse side effects, such as cravings or hunger, since it has been singled out as its own food group. Just by asking a simple question it looks like the simple answer is corn is its own food group.

Today we’re going to talk about sloppy joes. But before we can make sloppy joes we have to make catsup. A bit more labor intensive than mayonnaise but not difficult.

Mise en place the ingredients: fire roasted tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and coconut aminos. The recipe called for 2 tablespoons of garlic oil so sister made her own infusion.

Everything goes into the pot with salt and pepper and gets blended with an immersion blender.

The mixture is then cooked for 15 to 20 minutes until desired thickness is reached. And since you’ve got the inside scoop, we cooked for over 45 minutes and it never did get to bottled catsup consistency.

However, it did thicken to a degree and we didn’t want it to burn so we called it a win. The mixture was then blended again, cooled and put into the recipes sister was working on: meatloaf and sloppy joes.

I can’t tell you a lot about the meatloaf. I know I was in the kitchen because I saw her mixing it but I was occupied with something else. In addition to the catsup sister used oatmeal as an ingredient because we’re going to eat it the day we reintroduce nongluten grains. It went into the freezer.

The sloppy joes were really good. Sister has made them twice. Once using coconut aminos and once using only catsup. We both agreed the catsup only version was the best.

To one pound of hamburger she added onion, orange bell pepper, salt and garlic powder.

Once the meat was browned she added the catsup and aminos. The instructions say to cook for at least 10 minutes but that the longer it cooks the more the flavors will develop.

We were going to make sweet potato buns to go with them but it had been a long day in the kitchen and we were tired and hungry. Instead, sister threw a sweet potato in the oven while the meatloaf was cooking.

I could tell you that we dined on sloppy joes, sweet potato and zucchini but since you have the whole access backstage pass I can let you know – we scarfed it down.